Message from Mali: Keep Fracking, America!

Recent events in Mali and Libya, not to mention Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Bengla Desh, Somalia, and several other pleasure spots remind us — if such a reminder were necessary — that the Islamic world is, to put it mildly, not a fun place to be. According to religionofpeace.com, Islamic terrorists have accounted for 20,261 deadly terror attacks since 9/11. Just this random Thursday, January 17, the website reports the following:

Now it’s undeniable that back in the twentieth century, Germany, the Soviet Union and China were yet bigger killing machines, but in our time the Islamic world is the problem.

Some say the reasons for this are complex, but I think they’re relatively simple — the mix of plentiful oil and the Islamic religion provides a lethal cocktail. Oil makes it economically unnecessary for that backward region to advance into the modern world and Islam gives it an ideological excuse for not advancing. (Yes, I know some of those countries have no oil, but they were supported, or at least propped up, by those that did.) So a giant portion of our globe — from North Africa into the Horn of Africa, up through the Arab world and into Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan — remains a largely Islamic tribal culture, contributing almost nothing to civilization while continually threatening to destroy it.

Our government has denied much of this (even, amazingly, hiding the provenance of the Ft. Hood massacre when the perpetrator yelled “Allahu Akhbar”) for reasons that are both “politically correct” and supposedly strategic (realpolitik). With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (led, ironically, by a racist graduate of USC), the ongoing madness in Syria and the exploding mayhem in North Africa, this approach now seems ridiculous. It has succeeded at nothing.

So what can we do? I was one of those optimists who thought intervention in Iraq might be the cure — that we could bring democracy to that part of the world by a (hopefully judicious) use of force. The results so far are at best mixed. In fact, even a cursory look at the map tells us they are considerably worse than that.

It’s time to try a different approach. We could give it the euphemism “tough love” but what it amounts to is cutting off or rapidly phasing out foreign aid to countries like Egypt. Let them see what it’s like to have to support themselves like adult nations do. David Goldman has written several times on this site that they are on their way to becoming a failed state. Well, bring it on. Across that region, other than Israel, they’re all failed states to one degree or another. There is no way to go but up. When forced to make serious decisions, who knows… maybe a few people will grow up.

Meanwhile, we should do everything we can to encourage our own energy independence that is already well under way via fracking. It’s worth noting that recent fatal kidnapping violence occurred at a “remote desert gas plant” in Algeria where foreigners, including Americans, were working. What kind of a life is that? Who would want to be there when they could be back in Ohio or Pennsylvania pulling our own home grown energy out of the ground?

Not only might fracking save the U.S. economy, it might also force a new maturity on the Islamic world by making its people face reality. It also would deny nations like Saudi Arabia (our embarrassingly reactionary friends) and Iran and Venezuela (our even more reactionary enemies) the means to threaten others while oppressing their own people.

I know that sounds, if anything, more optimistic than an old neoconservative claim that an Iraq invasion would build a new Middle East, but we don’t have many other choices — other than bombing what remains of their culture into oblivion. The message of Mali should be clear: more fracking, please.

Apropos of which, two films about fracking have been released recently. I have seen neither of them, one (FrackNation, a pro-fracking documentary I understand is quite good) because I have not had the opportunity yet and the other (Promised Land, an anti-fracking Hollywood feature starring Matt Damon) because I have no intention of wasting my time watching it, although a free Academy screener of Promised Land sits about five feet away from me as I type this. Mr. Damon should be ashamed of himself for creating such uber-conventional, fuddy-duddy, bourgeois eco-twaddle. He deserves nothing more than all-expense paid trip to Mali — on Al Gore’s private jet.

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1.
Bart

Roger, I don’t agree with promiscuous repudiation of valid debts, but I do think there’s an argument for repudiating illegitimate debts to which we’ve never consented, as long as we give fair notice to potential lenders and investors. (They should have the opportunity to avoid making illegitimate loans and investments.) See the Center for Principled Repudiation page on Facebook. Here’s an interesting essay by Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard who I feel goes too far in advocating repudiation without notice. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

We try to be kind and presuppose a certain level of knowledge to BHO. But here is the reality, I don’t know how smart he is, but he is clearly very ignorant or downright evil.

He doesn’t understand that green energy cannot and will not power the US for 50 years. He doesn’t know real history, he didn’t take those classes. He did not get a classical education, he’s a simpleton wandering in the world without a reference to any reality outside of the delusional Classical Marxist education he received.

Menachem Baby we got your message,but Obama is at the helm now and this is why things are getting as bad as they are,thank God he won’t be there for ever ,it only feels like it. Some people are naive and some people will do anything to harm capitalism and the west and some people hate Jews so much that they’ll see the Muslims and their despicable actions through a rose colored glass- ignorance can be excused but stupidity is permanent.It won’t be a cake walk,but yes we can defeat those monsters.

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

Can anyone tell me a single benefit about our insane decision to give Egypt F16′s and M1A1 tanks? I could understand food aid or money but this seems like utter madness. This will only increase the chance of war between Egypt and Israel.
Is there really any doubt anymore about Obama’s true feelings toward Islam and his hatred of Israel?

Yes, it creates a lot of high-paying jobs in the good ol’ US of A, and it keeps up our half of the bargain to keep buying Egypt’s peace with Israel. Those F16s and M1A1s don’t pose a serious threat to Israel because tribalism and other cultural shortcomings keep Egyptians from effectively using those very complex weapon systems. Those planes and tanks are really just “bling” for their political leadership.

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

The first delivery of the free F-16s and M1A1 tanks to Egypt will occur this coming Monday. Despite pleas from many in Congress Obama prances to the Muslim Brotherhood’s tune. The despotic Morsi propped up while the democratic Netanyahu undermined. Expecting Obama to wean America from oil and save it from the tinpot dictators that control the crude is naive at best. Self delusional at worst.

This reminds me of a chimp study by Jane Goodall whereby she introduced free food into one of the chimp’s tribes. This ordinarily well behaved community became unraveled. The big, strong chimps usurped control and fought the others for the free food. It became so bad, that Dr. Goodall had to stop the experiment for fear that they would kill each other.

Lessons learned: free subsidies and easy money corrupt. We should cut off all foreign aid and let the chimps fend for themselves.

Interesting bit of information. Didn’t know about that. As to your conclusion: agree on principle. In practice your suggestion would look, however, something like this: Cutting off OUR foreign aid would literally create a foreign aid “vacuum”, to be filled by other nations/regions (China, Russia, India, Europe, SE Asia) advancing THEIR interests by granting the “aid” which we withdrew. We would lose whatever large or small, moral or “immoral”, influence we might have had, while not improving the outcome even one small measure.

This, in a nutshell, is the usual foreign policy dilemma: Engaging entails costs (financial and moral) while disengaging (or not engaging) is by no means “free”, unless you are the “monopolist” of the foreign aid/policy “market”. “Attaching strings” to one’s engagement, although to some extent desirable, partakes of this same dilemma.

Conclusion: There is no simple, deterministic and predictable, outcome, no matter how you frame the problem. “Help” is not always wanted, nor needed, as well as being often inappropriate and almost always abused; as Jane Goodall found out. Trouble is, what worked for apes (withdrawing the “help”) is not a likely solution for failing states. And, it worked for her only because at the time she was the “monopolist of monkey aid”. It would not have worked had there been other “researchers” standing ready to again “bribe” the apes for their purposes!

I was of course aware of the dilemma you describe, Roger Sc, when I wrote the original article. IT has been the conventional wisdom just about as long as I have been alive. But like all CW, it should be subject to examination. I think judicious examination may yield surprising conclusions in this case.

Uh Roger, you are letting old left left over thinking out, question CW? Especially progressive CW? ha.
Less frivolously, I agree with you and add who else can really fill the vacuum? Or aid is so massive that no single entity can compete. Recipients would have to have to sell there souls to several masters to make up the difference. And who can serve that many lords? And, amongst those even able to consider being the the ‘buy friends’ club, which would offer aid without considerably more strings than we? No-one.
Store bought friends. I was always warned against them…but that was a Biblical admonishment.
ta

Roger Sc: Your comment suggests you believe that, by giving aid, we “influence” the recipients of said aid. But, in fact, don’t ungrateful (even antithetical?) entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood accept the aid, while simultaneously showing their utter contempt of us? At best, people like that may mouth the correct platitudes, while all they are doing is engaging in taqiyyah. Looked at another way: if all our aid still gets us called “infidels,” fit only for the executioner, how likely are they to flock to the “interests (of) China, Russia, India, Europe, SE Asia?”

I am not so sure if others (China, Russia, India, Europe, SE Asia)are very much interested to replace the US as aid-provider. If they were they would try to out-bid the US. Even if they would replace the US, why not let them have the trouble?

Sorry. We’ve been doing that for 50 years, and accomplished da$&#^ little. It’s time to cut the purse strings to the Muddled East — all of it. Not only should we develop our own energy, we should do enough developing we have extra to sell – at market prices – to our “friends”. If any of them wish to take over supplying “foreign aid” to the Muddled East, let them. Doing that was one of the things that bankrupted the Soviet Union. If Russia or China wish to play that game these days, let them. I’d be willing to bet that if we cut all foreign aid next Thursday, Russia and China would announce a significant cutback in their own aid the following Monday. BTW, when I say cut ALL foreign aid, that also includes billions to several European nations that are doing their best to cut us out of markets around the world. Our military “umbrella” has allowed Europe to develop a hollow military (only good from 9 to 5, and never on weekends or holidays) while we fight all the proxy wars, and pay all the expenses. Nuts to that! From now on, Europe needs to pay its own way, or go under.

Early on during the Keystone pipeline controversy there was an excellent ad touting “Ethical Oil.” It would nice to see this ad rerun with “Ethical Gas” included. The premise of the ad was that it was unethical for us to be buying our energy supplies from a part of the world whose culture is the antithesis of everything the West stands for when we have no need to do so.

That campaign was more for consumption in Canada than in the US and had more to do with countering potent political forces up there aimed at closing the entire oil sands industry. With Canada’s economic growth juggernaut continuing unflapped by the headwinds facing much of the world and everyone knowing that oil is the key driver that campaign has been a victim of its own success. The final nail in the coffin was NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s absurd, self-parodying wish to shut down the oil sands so the Canadian dollar would depreciate against the USD, making Canada’s cheap manufacturing exports competitive against China’s again.

The ND, PA and TX fracking stories are having much the same effect on the energy debate here in the lower 48 right now.

exdem-I have been writing this week bout all the National Science Foundation spending going to corrupt math and science and education as traditionally understood. To shut down accurate knowledge and thought. As part of that I read the National Climate Assessment draft that came out last Friday.

Utter nonsense and more excuses for a government redesigned and directed economy around the chimera of Low Carbon. But there was the Chevron Corporation on the panel.

They understand that all this CAGW nonsense is making their commodities more valuable in the long term.

There was a great Cato study recently that described that without fossil fuels we would have the bring global land masses the size of Latin America, Canada, and India under agricultural cultivation. So this CAGW push apart from wrecking minds, budgets, and economies would also be the ultimate environmental disaster.

That is once we step away from the modelling and deal with reality instead.

Concise and accurate:
“Oil makes it economically unnecessary for that backward region to advance into the modern world and Islam gives it an ideological excuse for not advancing. … So a giant portion of our globe … remains a largely Islamic tribal culture, contributing almost nothing to civilization while continually threatening to destroy it.”

Another part of Islamic practice that dooms this culture is the huge rate of first cousin marriages. The people are so extensively inbred, and this has been going on for centuries, that their reasoning and emotional stability are tragically diminished. Islamic culture is a humanitarian tragedy, and it is time to step back and let it implode on it’s own. The more we try to help, the more determined they become to murder us infidels.

I noticed something at the Cairo speech. Obama loves straw-men arguments (“we do not want to take ALL your guns away”).There is enormous intentional lack of precision in his speeches.

In Cairo he ran down a litany of accomplishments in literature, science, and math that came out of the middle east. But this was mostly before Islam. People also assume that all middle-eastern muslims are arabs and all arabs are muslims – neither true.

So I take it you’ve finally realized the whole Bush doctrine thing was a massive mistake? People don’t want freedom. Not in the Middle East.

Not here, either. We’ve shown we are all too eager to give up all kinds of freedoms for a false sense of security.

We shouldn’t cut and run from the world, but we shouldn’t try to constantly meddle, like we have (and still are). We should reward countries that are reasonable well behaved. Like Israel. Their Iron Dome missile defense thing is well worth supporting. Buying tanks and such on the other hand maybe not so much (especially Egypt)

No, Jeremy. You are very wrong. You have struck a nerve in me. You have not had the experience that I had as a young man in the 1960’s when I lived in Iran. I had intimate daily contact with Iranians at all social and work levels. With the young, the old, the illiterate, the educated, the religious, the non-religious, the poor, and the wealthy. When you write, and I am sure you reflect the opinion of many uninformed others, the blanket assumption that “People don’t want freedom. Not in the Middle East” you could not be more mistaken. The greatest opportunity for an exemplar state of peace and stability was squandered by Jimmy Carter when he undermined the Shah (sometimes a jerk and sometimes a thug) and handed an entire country of freedom yearning souls over to the worst kind of backward thinking tyrants. If there are any Iranians or others of the area out there I would hope that you would comment and set straight those who hold Jeremy’s uninformed view.

Carter certainly had a huge impact on Iran by not supporting the Shah of Iran. That and his meddling in Afghanistan which drew the USSR into that country have had lasting effects. Obama’s meddling will further enhance what I’ve come to call ‘The Carter Effect’. Stupid or planned? Who knows the mind of the liberal? Certainly not the liberal!

NOte that the price paid for middle east oil is higher than we think because the US military is protecting the oil transit routes with the 6th Fleet and to support that effort, the US has military bases all over the middle east.
This is a waste of billions of dollars a year that must be added to the price of oil.
The USA can become independent of ME oil if we only “harvested” our home grown petroleum resources – including offshore USA – plus importing Canadian oil.
But this will NOT happen because the radical “environmentalists” (i.e, communists) wish to see the USA economically and militarily eviscerated. They could care less about the environment. It is just a ploy, a scam to promote their radical left wing, marxist agenda.
Just as Lenin used the scam of the “proletariat” to seize power for himself and his fellow elitists, the enviros here have latched onto their own scam to promote and promote their communist worldview upon the citizenry.

JA, While I fully support petroleum production in North America, increasing supplies of oil from the sane parts of the globe doesn’t result in “energy independence”. Canada is a net exporter, but supply disruptions around the world can still cause oil prices in Canada to spike. A more clearly defined goal would be “energy resilience” where world markets have enough spare production so that disruption of the oil output from any one country can be absorbed without large increases in the price of oil. Since war and hurricanes are very unlikely to disrupt oil production from Alberta and North Dakota, building the Keystone XL pipeline should be an obvious positive development for “energy resiliance”.

Last year I saw someone walking around the Philadelphia airport wearing a “stop the pipeline” t-shirt. I had to resist getting into a shouting match with this guy. We used to have a consensus that private Red State energy projects were mostly ignored by people living on the East and West coasts, balanced by self-imposed restrictions on offshore drilling in the Atlantic and the Pacific. With the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama started imposing urban elite sensibilities on flyover country, weakening the US.

I like your post and agree with your conclusions – energy resilience. I hadn’t heard that before but a worthy goal.

I also second your observation on imposition. While there has been an ongoing battle between necessary and unnecessary regulation and compliance courtesy of the EPA and hydrocarbon production, it is far more recent that private Red State energy projects were so openly attacked by west and east coast media – and years since I remember Presidential intervention.

After O’Dismal gets done with downsizing our military, including the navy, we won’t have enough ships to ensure the passage of oil thru the ME and N. Africa. So look on the bright side, the Euros and the Chinese will have to expend their own assets to get their oil from the shieks.

And if God had a sense of humor, he’d dry up the oil held by the petro-shieks and the neo-communists. Oh, well, I can only hope…..

Which adult nations are you referring to? It certainly is not us. We are not supporting ourselves considering we borrow some 40 cents on the dollar from mostly the Chinese.
That means the chinese are really the only ones who can claim to be adults…..vicious, communist, power hungry adults but adults none the less. Fortunately for them there are no adults left in power in the western world to oppose them

You need to look into what’s actually going on in China. They’re in just about the same boat as America wrt internal divisions and political and economic strife. The wrong input at just the wrong time and they’ve got another civil war to deal with.

In short, politically, socially and economically, they’re up to their elbows in alligators, just like everyone else is.

Not just fracking, but drilling off shore and in Alaska. Aside from that we can also either build some garbage to oil plants or more simply more clean incinerators to generate power and hopefully replace oil burning power plants. In the long term: go nuclear! Latest generation plants are a lot safer than the first generation plants we have now that are wearing out.

But people probably won’t wake up until oil is priced in other than dollars and our price shoots up. China is also increasing its oil purchases which will also increase prices. But then knowing how stupid most Americans are now they will most likely start howling for Obama to give them free oil, nationalize oil companies, etc. which will only make things far, far worse.

Anything that can be done efficiently, economically and on enough scale to make a difference should be encouraged. If it requires sustained subsidy for as far as the eye can see then it should be consigned to the “Great Ideas At The Time” junkheap.

Oil ranks up there with wind and solar in it’s insignificance for electric power generation. Too expensive compared to natural gas or coal! Instead, oil is used to make energy-dense liquid fuels for transportation: diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel.

I agree with you both. Grants could be used to help get some of these projects off the ground but they should not depend on subsidies to stay in operation. It would also help if there were fewer regulations and lower taxes.

Oil is an expensive fuel but it is still burned at a large percentage of power plants. These should have been replaced by now with gas or nuclear plants. Oil is used for more than just energy such as plastics, which ideally would be recycled.

There are a lot of things that could be done that are efficient. Unfortunately, politics and corruption are playing too big of a role in what government does today rather than practicality and what makes sense.

Not if you live in Alaska! Anchorage and some of the Kenai Peninsula have natural gas for heat and for electrical generation. Fairbanks has coal for electrical power but you don’t want to try to pay for electric heat in Fairbanks with over 15,000 heating degree days and -40F not uncommon. The rest of the State has oil heat and with a few exceptions, e.g., Juneau with hydro, diesel generated electricity and no grid. When I lived in Juneau, an avalanche took out the main transmission line from the hydro plant to town. Fortunately, Juneau had kept the old diesel generation plants for standby or we’d have been in the dark for months. In one fell swoop our electric rates went from an average of about $0.105/Kwh to almost $0.50/Kwh. You learned very quickly how to save electricity! Clothespins and clothesline sold out within hours and people very quickly assumed an even more wrinkled and rumpled appearance than the already low Juneau standard.

Our government has denied much of this (even, amazingly, hiding the provenance of the Ft. Hood massacre when the perpetrator yelled “Allahu Akhbar”) for reasons that are both “politically correct” and supposedly strategic (realpolitik).

Yesterday, both Leon Panetta and Hillary Clintton were freely using the word “terrorism” to describe the assault on the natural gas facility in eastern Algeria.

My thought is that they took a really terrible blow trying to spin Benghazi, a United States President lying to the American public for 2 solid weeks, asserting that that well planned terrorist assault on the Benghazi installation was spontaneous & a spillover from the agitation in Cairo over “the video”.

So now administration lackeys are going out of their way to (at least) sound sane.

Obama and sidekick Joe told us Al Qaeda had been decimated as a function of the flea bitten old man being killed & hawked that fiction to their “low information voters” in order to secure re-election.

I still don’t get why it is politically incorrect to call it terrorism or even Islamic terrorism. What percentage of our population is going to get upset over that? No, this is pure Obama megalomania. I will stop the rising seas. I will win over the Muslim hoards and bring Pax Obama to the world.

Okay, this is completely off- topic, entirely. But- I can’t find the post:: Hobby Lobby is in a suit in violation of Obamacare. Hobby Lobby is doing this as a Christian Cause. Hobby Lobby, while successful, is a merely regional retailer.

Hot Topic is a 3 billion dollar Christian American/ Korean company. Could someone please broker a meeting between the two decision-makers there? There isn’t even a phone number that I can find for Hobby Lobby, and the Hot Topic one I found was in Korean. I’m not on Linkedin, or any social media.

Hot Topic prints John 3:16 on the bottom of its bags, as its quiet witness. It also has a team of lawyers on retainer who have never lost a case.

“Mr. Damon should be ashamed of himself for creating such uber-conventional, fuddy-duddy, bourgeois eco-twaddle. He deserves nothing more than all-expense paid trip to Mali — on Al Gore’s private jet.”

Well, good luck with energy independence with Obama in the White House! I just do not see Obama abandoning Arab oil sheiks — especially not if it would also result in a benefit for Americans. (Perish the thought.) Remember, Obama’s objective is to send billions, if not trillions to America’s enemies; that is, he wishes to enrich them while bankrupting the evil empire (America).

Not only is he enriching them he is activly and quite openly arming them. He has agreed to send 20 F16′s and 100 M1A1 tanks to his Muslim Brotherhood buddies in Egypt. However, according to Obama’s new CIA director, the Muslim Brotherhood is a secular moderate organization so we have nothing to worry about.

Permit me off topic a bit for info and a concern that I never hear mentioned. A concern that goes beyond money but with support of an ally.

There’s one mathematical problem Roger with your proposal. I recently read even with a push for more hydraulic fracking, we “might” be able to produce domestically 10MM barrels of crude a day at present. I’ve been out of the hydrocarbon industry for awhile, but not so long to recognize we still require about 18-20MM barrels of crude a day just to meet domestic demand.

It is possible that we might be able to drill our way out of middle east dependency in the foreseeable future, but that is in large part dependent on having a real national energy policy – including nuclear, pipelines for transportation from our neighbors, natural gas exploitation, and billions in infrastructure including refining. Green energy is a pipe dream at present, unless you consider nuclear energy green – I do, the Left doesn’t.

Obama and his entire feckless cabinet will most likely garner their expertise from the likes of Matt Damon, just like the now dead imbeciles stopped the building of nuclear plants in the 70s with fears of China Syndrome. I heard no less than Clarke Howard, yes apolitical Clarke Howard or so I thought, ranting a few weeks back about the evil coal industry. Apparently Clarke is a master saver and broker, but clueless how the porch light comes on around this country.

So while Obama is serendipitously the benefactor of our technology, he’s also inane enough to do everything to squander domestic production in the name of bad science and political correctness run amok. Or worse, perhaps it provides the ability to weaken America. I put nothing past this wretched and clearly wicked man.

That’s the obvious. I have a more long-term concern in the event we are able to alleviate the need for middle east oil.

I have listened to these jackals from the left for years who would sell Israel out in a minute if they could. Sit down to a discussion and you would believe Israel is what ails the globe. How many millions are currently grumbling that we provide Israel military hardware? How many millions more are demanding let Israel fight her own fight?

Assuming for one minute we actually could completely alleviate the need for middle east oil, how long would it be before Israel became unnecessary, a scapegoat, a pariah left with nothing but a token American presence in the middle east?

It’s a complicated world we live in anymore and many times, things are not as they seem. If you can’t even correctly identify your enemy and apparently most Americans can’t both domestic and foreign, then the rest of us need to be as wise as serpents. Because here and abroad, we’re dealing with serpents.

Much depends on how we define our interests. We, as in the US, don’t use much Middle Eastern or North African oil. Of course, since oil in fungible, the oil we import from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria is oil that can’t go somewhere else. It is Europe and Japan that really need MENA oil and we have shouldered the burden of keeping MENA oil plentiful and relatively cheap for our “allies” and “trading partners.”

I wish I really understood what Nixon was thinking and why when he in essence took the US off the gold standard and put us on the oil standard. While at the time oil was cheap and the US was both independent and in possession of the newest and biggest “elephant,” the Alaska North Slope, Nixon was a smart enough man to know the political difficulty of any further oil development in the US or its offshore provinces. I think the Santa Barbara spill that eliminated all future development in or off California ocurred in ’68, so that would be fresh.

I know columnist Jack Anderson thought there was something nefarious about Nixon’s non-intervention in Khaddafi’s nationalization of the oil fields in Libya. The magisterial history of the oil industry “The Prize” seems almost deliberately vague about western acquiescence to the Arabs and others systematically nationalizing Western developed and owned or leased oil provinces in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the same period in which we went off gold and on to pure fiat currency which was essentially an oil standard.

Because of where I live and what I used to do for a living, I know oil province economics better than most, but from a macroeconomic and geopolitical perspective, I find Western generally and American specifically actions in the period incomprehensible. Then, subsequently, under Reagan and Thatcher, we, the Brits, and the Norwegians destroy the OPEC price paradigm with astounding uplifts in the ’80s, the price creeps up a bit during the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, but after the Gulf War falls precipitously again. That was all good for the general economy but it really sucked in the oil patch; we sweated a lot of paydays in Alaska’s state government in those days. Then it starts to creep up again by 2000. Somewhere I still have a memo that I wrote to the COS in about 2004 about an issue we were having with our maritime unions in which I said something like, “oil’s been over $50/bbl. for a month now; lets throw some money at them and get of the front page.” What the US would give for $50/bbl. oil now, though it dropped to that range right after Comrade Obama’s reign began.

It is very hard for me to believe in grand schemes or conspiracies especially when governments are involved. Even if you can find people in government smart enough to come up with a conspiracy, you can never keep a secret. Yet, whatever happened in the ’60s and early ’70s to institute an oil standard is inexplicable. Whatever happened in 2007 and 2008 to manipulate that standard and put the price of oil at stratospheric levels only to have the price fall back to the level of almost a decade before on Obama’s election admits to no explanation that isn’t very, very frightening to contemplate.

I haven’t seen the latest stats, but if memory serves about half of our imported crude comes from Africa and and the Saud affiliated states – and it might be less than that now as my service somewhat dated. So to play safe say about 20% of our domestic refining is derived from someplace other than the Western Hemisphere. Sound about right?

Play our cards right, conserve and we might be able to cover it with drill, baby, drill. Of course, we can screw that pooch too if Obama can sufficiently weaken the dollar. Watch the price of oil then.

The left will fight fracking as much over the supposed emotional content of the word “fracking” than for any other ‘reason.’ It has the same emotionally galvanizing impact as the word “assault,” as in assault rifle. Maybe we should come up with less emotionally charged words to describe objects and techniques so as to make leftists’ lives a little easier. But, then, don’t they call terrorists “fighters” and wars “overseas contingency operations” rather than what they are? It’s a bit confusing until you realize that changing the subject is second nature to every leftist, particularly when confronted with irrefutable facts.

Obama is pushing permanent crisis be that gun control, debt ceiling, or Obamacare. It creates a very hostile and intolerant atmosphere in the society, but this is exactly the way in which dictators act in order to push their agenda. The entire country is becoming confused, puzzled, irritated, nervous, delusional, desperate, and as a result – politically paralyzed. It plays well to Obama and his people’s hands. They feel comfortable without facing any kind of organized and active opposition. Rare voices against Obama’s bold and aggressive actions are silenced or demonized by media. The question is : How long this situation will last and what eventually will come out of it?
Oh, and fracking may not help in this situation at all…

Lurch from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis, all preliminary to the triumph of the overarching state.

At least 3 times in the presidential debates, Obama claimed credit for increased US oil production, then looked chagrined at being reminded that it isn’t happening on federally controlled lands but on private lands. Production on federal lands has declined something like 15%.

Pisses Obama off that private developers still have any capabilities and independence at all.

It is criminal for a government not to use the resources of its country. We have extremely abundant petroleum and coal but some Americans consider themselves too good to use these “dirty” fuels. I say create a government/industry alliance to produce all of the energy we need and even to export the excess–and forget the nonsense with wind and solar power. And let’s create more nuclear power plants–they are clean and safe and produce cheap energy.

China will try to fill the void in any country where the US retreats. However China will also benefit significanly from fracking, which might make them less agressive in trying to nail down oil based relationships with world tyrants. China will also hamstrung by a declining world economy and rising wages as the “bare trees” generation takes their place in the workforce.

And there is no Matt Damon in China to advise the population of fracking will cause petroleum to come gurgling up into their bathtubs.

China will soon have both the weaponry and the manpower to go ahead and take what they want from the denizens of the Middle East. They won’t feel any need to kiss up to the seventh-century savages who have had a long enough run at our expense.

Thank you Roger for reminding me why I am a certain kind of conservative and no longer a liberal. Your thinking about the neo conservative policies of the Bush era closely parallels my own evolution. While there is plenty of static ideological thinking among conservatives and Republicans (overlapping by not identical sets) for me , as a recovering liberal, the most appalling thing about the left is that there is so little recognition that the old verities of mid century liberalism need to be questioned. I see occasional signs of life but nothing like this post which openly recognizes that neither the Bush administration nor the current one has made much headway with the problem of Islamism. I think that is in large part because both Bush and Obama mistakenly think that the Islamists are ‘like us’ and want freedom and democracy. Like most people here I see Obama’s policies as worse than Bush’s but they really are two versions of liberal interventionism. Both sides posture opposition – the Republican’s to Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia. the Democrats to Bush’s intervention in Afghanistan and then Iraq, and the Republicans to Obama’s in Libya. Neither is offering an alternative based on what we have learned: we can’t derail Islamism with political correctness has amply demonstrated by both parties. I am overjoyed to see Roger calling for something that MIGHT actually be effective in changing the situation. When conventional wisdom stops working the first people to recognize it and move on are the actual ‘progressives’.